Heroes get remembered, but legends never die
by sonicsora
Summary: Eddie finally has time to think about everything he's learned about his parents. All it's really doing is leaving him with more questions he has no answers to. Oneshot.


Based wholly off a conversation I had with a friend on tumblr about Eddie's parents. His parents had a fucked up lot in life and Eddie is starting to question things more than he'd ever want to. Enjoy a crisis on Eddie's part!

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After everything has settled back to vague normalcy. After Ironheade moves back home, after Lars is given a proper burial near Bladehenge, after, after everyone recovers from the war, after he and Ophelia have a long talk- Eddie has time to actually think.

Time to _really_ think, not jump into a new plan of attack, fortify tent bases to keep things stable in camp or make a new schematic to build something. He has to actually, truly, deeply think about what happened.

Eddie isn't quite sure how to cope at first. A lot of revelations all kind of hit back to back on him in a way he hadn't really processed fully. Surface level reactions happened of course, but nothing really concrete.

The easy excuse of 'Demon venom' fell away to the truth.

 _I'm a half demon. Holy shit._

 _My mom was the emperor, what the fuck._

Sometimes the thought would randomly collide into him when he was elbow deep in his car, or when he's making conversation with someone. He'd be completely derailed by it and have to bumble back to what he was doing after a kind of embarrassingly long confused pause.

The weirdest part of it all was finding that legend when things calmed down. Those magical altars with the world's myths were always kind of a treat to run into as far as Eddie was concerned. Those myths always filled in the blanks for him on what had happened and who was who.

The final one he finds is jarring, adding another pile of confusion onto his life so far. The way it describes his parents leaves Eddie feeling… uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is about the right word for it.

He never really thought about his parents relationship. His father had never talked about mom unless prodded. Even then the conversations dried up fairly quickly. Riggnarok would offer small tidbits that felt nice in the moment but didn't really say much about her. Simple stuff Eddie is fairly sure his dad picked up from movies or pop culture. Platitudes that were comforting when he was a kid or a teenager, but as an adult it felt strangely off kilter. The conformation from that legend only proves his suspicions that his dad was bullshitting right.

 _Did my parents even love each other?_

That kind of thought popping into his head at 4am does not help Eddie sleep. It just makes him have more pressing strange questions. The kind of questions that made him stare upwards at the ceiling of his tent listlessly.

 _Did I only happen cause my parents were lonely?_

 _Did they even want me?_

 _If I didn't happen would they have just lived in that cave forever?_

It is one of those nights Eddie is glad he's sleeping alone. He's fairly sure his tossing and turning would have woken Ophelia up by now. He really doesn't want to make her already spotty sleeping schedule worse with his own weird shit. He turns onto his side yanking the fur up over his body in attempt to try and trick himself to sleep. His body is so comfortable but his brain is working over time.

He can't exactly talk about this with anyone. As far as Ironheade is concerned his transformations are and always will be because of demon venom. His father was Riggnarok the hero, his mother whoever she was didn't really matter in their eyes.

Eddie kind of preferred that to the likely venom and disgust that would come if they found out his mother was Succoria The Demon Emperor. Even the name feels cursed at this point. A name full of everything nasty.

He remembered accusing Ophelia of being Succoria with the same anger and disgust everyone else in Ironheade did. He didn't know jack shit but went with it because everyone else felt so certain about it. It… wasn't that surprising Ophelia laughed him off then. His ignorance was embarrassing in hindsight to say the least.

Eddie groaned a little covering his face with his hands. "Fuuuucckkkk." He was so not going to get any sleep. Not a fucking wink of sleep was in his future.

Eddie did not want to have an existential crisis right now. Especially not over who his parents where or if they even loved each other. He used to wonder as a kid what his mother was like. Actually knowing kind of blew. His mother having lost her fighting spirit and given up only added to the weirdness of everything.

Only then when his mother was depressed did his dad actually- become a thing? "Fuck." Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose. "Not thinking about this- anymore, nope, nope." He muttered to himself turning over again. He buried himself fully into the piles of furs that made up his bedroll attempting to just focus on how overly warm he was opposed to the weirdness that was his parents.

"If you're both in like some after life, you guys fuckin' suck." He muttered lowly to himself, directing it at his parents rather uselessly. "I didn't need this shit y'know."

Sure his weird parentage came with a lot of cool gifts, but it also meant he was somewhere in the middle of man and monster. He could blend into humanity so easily and no one was the wiser. What the fuck was that going to mean down the line? What was his life going to be like? Would he become more demonic with age? Would any kids he have like… come out with extra limbs?

This was kind of fucking with his happy ending and Eddie wasn't exactly thrilled about it.


End file.
